Beware of the Big Brinicle of Death

in Video - Science | November 30th, 2011

The Brini­cle of Death. It has nev­er been cap­tured on film … until now. And it’s all on dis­play cour­tesy of the BBC series Frozen Plan­et.

In a nut­shell, a brini­cle forms when cold, dense brine comes into con­tact with warmer water. It all starts on the ocean’s sur­face, and then the emerg­ing brini­cle (oth­er­wise known as an ice sta­lac­tite) starts to move down­ward, form­ing some­thing of a sub­merged tor­na­do, until it even­tu­al­ly hits the ocean floor and freezes every­thing in its path. The video above takes a 5–6 hour event and reduces it to a crisp, kind of hair-rais­ing two min­utes.

Iron Mike Tyson Sings “The Girl From Ipanema”

in Music, Random | November 29th, 2011

Once beau­ty, now farce. h/t @opedr

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Getz and Gilber­to Per­form ‘The Girl from Ipane­ma’

The World’s Highest Artificial Tornado

in Art, Technology | November 29th, 2011

The Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in Stuttgart, Ger­many, is a remark­able struc­ture. Designed by Ben van Berkel and Car­o­line Bos of the Dutch firm UN Stu­dio, the build­ing received rave reviews when it opened in May of 2006. Influ­enced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggen­heim Muse­um in New York, the build­ing was described as “jet-age baroque” by The Guardian archi­tec­ture crit­ic Jonathan Glancey. “It twists and turns with breath­tak­ing com­plex­i­ty,” Glancey wrote in 2006, “clever as a con­jur­ing trick.”

The archi­tects need­ed a bit of mag­ic to bring the muse­um’s open plan into com­pli­ance with fire codes. Like in the Guggen­heim, the inte­ri­or is one con­tin­u­ous­ly unfold­ing space that spi­rals around a cen­tral atri­um. As a con­se­quence there could be no fire doors to con­tain smoke if a blaze broke out in one sec­tion of the build­ing. To solve the prob­lem, UN Stu­dio hired the engi­neer­ing firm Imtech to design a sys­tem that would draw smoke away from all areas of the muse­um, allow­ing peo­ple to escape.

The result is the world’s largest man-made air vor­tex, a 112-foot-high tor­na­do that auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vates in the event of a fire, draw­ing smoke into the cen­ter of the atri­um and mov­ing it upward through an axi­al fan in the ceil­ing. An array of 144 out­lets in the sur­round­ing walls emit pow­er­ful jets of air to gen­er­ate a cen­tral region of low pres­sure, just like in a real tor­na­do. Imtech engi­neers per­fect­ed the design using com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ic (CDF) sim­u­la­tions and lab­o­ra­to­ry mod­els.  The firm has cre­at­ed sim­i­lar sys­tems for air­ports in sev­er­al Ger­man cities, includ­ing Düssel­dorf and Ham­burg. You can watch the tor­na­do at the Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in action above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The DIY Tor­na­do Machine

A Day in Venezia

in Art, Life | November 29th, 2011

3,000,000 tourists move through Venice each year. The flood starts dur­ing the spring and peaks in sum­mer, then recedes dur­ing the cool­er months, giv­ing the local res­i­dents a lit­tle peace. True, the city, made up of 124 islands, 183 canals and 438 bridges, is radi­ant dur­ing the sum­mer. (Just watch below.) But the “Queen of the Adri­at­ic” takes on a dif­fer­ent beau­ty in the win­ter, some­thing that a tourist, who sim­ply goes by FKY, cap­tures in an art­ful video above. Enjoy, and if you want to know more about the archi­tec­tur­al won­ders of this 1500-year-old city, don’t miss How Venice Works.

Address is Approximate: A Lovely Animated Film Made with Google Maps

in Animation, Maps, Video - Arts & Culture | November 28th, 2011

Next up: a love­ly film about a lone­ly desk toy that longs for adven­ture. Observ­ing the space around him, a robot finds a toy car and heads off on a road trip across the Unit­ed States, guid­ed only by Google Maps Street View. We start on the Brook­lyn Bridge and fin­ish on the Pacif­ic Coast High­way in Cal­i­for­nia. Parts of the video look like sequences from a Pixar film, they are so well made. In real­i­ty, the film was pro­duced, ani­mat­ed, filmed, lit, edit­ed and grad­ed by one per­son: Tom Jenk­ins.

A great treat to start the week.

via Flow­ing Data

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

A Big Bach Download: The Complete Organ Works for Free

in Music | November 22nd, 2011

We men­tioned this one long ago, and it’s time to men­tion it again: You can down­load for free the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. They were record­ed by Dr. James Kib­bie (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Leipzig, Ger­many. Feel free to start with a col­lec­tion of Favorite Mas­ter­works, or get the com­plete works that have been divid­ed into 13 groups for easy down­load. Once you down­load these zip files, you will need to unzip them before play­ing the tracks. Enjoy, and don’t miss our relat­ed post: How a Bach Canon Works. It’s rather bril­liant.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Lt. John Pike Pepper Sprays His Way Into Art History

in Art, Current Affairs | November 22nd, 2011

Pep­per spray stu­dents in the face on Fri­day, and you wake up the face of evil on Sat­ur­day. Then, the brunt of some clever jokes on Mon­day. Look! There’s Lieu­tenant John Pike pop­ping into the famous paint­ing, The Spir­it of ’76, and mac­ing a wound­ed sol­dier while he’s down. That’s low.

Now the sym­bol of French free­dom, Delacroix’s Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. Is Pike using pep­per spray? Or, on clos­er inspec­tion, is that a shot of deodor­ant? Quel con ce mec.

Free­dom from Want is part of Nor­man Rock­well’s Four Free­doms series of paint­ings. And guess who is ruin­ing free­dom, Thanks­giv­ing and every­thing whole­some?

Yes, he even­tu­al­ly des­e­crates Picas­so’s anti-war mur­al, Guer­ni­ca, too.

A baby seal? WTF Pike?!!

More art his­to­ry fun awaits you at the Pep­per­Spray­ing­Cop Tum­blr site.

H/T Heather and Wash­Po

The Clash: Westway to the World

in Film, Music | November 18th, 2011

The Gram­my-win­ning 2000 film, The Clash: West­way to the World, is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the rise and fall of one of his­to­ry’s great­est rock bands. The Clash did­n’t invent punk rock–bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pis­tols pre­ced­ed them–but they did their best to rein­vent it, mov­ing beyond the self-absorbed nihilism of the Pis­tols to embrace a more glob­al, polit­i­cal­ly engaged ethos that moshed togeth­er a riot of musi­cal and cul­tur­al influ­ences, includ­ing reg­gae and rap. Per­haps no one was more respon­si­ble for inject­ing those influ­ences into the punk sub­cul­ture than the man who made this movie, Don Letts.

The British-born son of Jamaican immi­grants, Letts ran a cloth­ing bou­tique in West Lon­don in the ear­ly 1970s that became an ear­ly gath­er­ing place for punk rock­ers. He lat­er became the res­i­dent DJ at the first punk night­club, The Roxy, at a time when there weren’t many punk records out, so he played a lot of reg­gae. And he start­ed record­ing the scene. “When the punk rock thing hap­pened in about 1976,” Letts lat­er recalled, “the whole ‘Do It Your­self’ prin­ci­ple came into play. All my mates picked up gui­tars and I want­ed to pick up some­thing too, but the stage was kind of full up. So I picked up a Super 8 cam­era, and using the ‘DIY’ prin­ci­ple, taught myself to become a film­mak­er through film­ing the bands I liked and work­ing out how to do it as I went along. I’d nev­er been to film school; I nev­er even read the instruc­tions for the cam­era!”

The raw, unpol­ished footage was edit­ed togeth­er in 1978 and released as The Punk Rock Movie. Letts went on to make all of the Clash’s videos, and in 1981 when the Clash played their leg­endary 17 nights at Bond’s Inter­na­tion­al Casi­no in Times Square, Letts was com­mi­sioned by the band’s mer­cu­r­ial man­ag­er, Bernie Rhodes, to make a doc­u­men­tary. As music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz writes in his book Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Strum­mer, “after each night’s show he’d be hand­ed a wedge of dol­lars by Bernie and told to buy more film.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Rhodes then placed almost all of Letts’s footage in a stor­age facil­i­ty in New York and for­got to pay the bill. The exposed film was thrown away.

So when Sony lat­er approached Letts to put togeth­er The Clash: West­way to the World, he had to make do with oth­er archival footage and inter­views. In the inter­views, the mem­bers of the band are char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sin­cere in their assess­ment of why the band dis­in­te­grat­ed. When Mick Jones formed Big Audio Dyna­mite in 1984, Letts was invit­ed to join the group. The man who brought reg­gae to punk still could­n’t play a musi­cal instru­ment, so he intro­duced film-edit­ing tech­niques to the music. He became an ear­ly pio­neer of sam­pling, using audio clips from old movies and oth­er sources. “When the oth­ers would be lay­ing down their parts in the stu­dio,” Letts lat­er said of his days with Big Audio Dyna­mite, “I’d be run­ning what was tan­ta­mount to a film fes­ti­val in the green room.”

Don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. 435 films and count­ing.

Copenhagen Philharmonic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Station

in Music | November 17th, 2011

The Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra dates all the way back to 1843, mak­ing it one of the old­est pro­fes­sion­al sym­pho­ny orches­tras around. But it’s not so old that it can’t par­take in the con­tem­po­rary flash mob trend. Ear­li­er this year, they broke out some Rav­el’s Bolero at Copen­hagen’s Cen­tral Sta­tion. Feel free to add it to a playlist that includes Verdi’s La travi­a­ta in Valen­cia, Spain and Han­del’s Mes­si­ah in the city of Broth­er­ly Love. Thanks Bob for send­ing our way.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Werner Herzog: Movies Won’t Change the World

in Current Affairs, Film | November 16th, 2011

Wern­er Her­zog does­n’t work under any illu­sions. In this Stu­dio Q inter­view, the film­mak­er tells Jian Ghome­shi that “movies don’t change things.” “Even influ­en­tial doc­u­men­taries like Inside Job “do not real­ly change the course of our lives.” And that applies to his lat­est film, Into the Abyss, which takes a Dos­toyevskian look at a triple mur­der com­mit­ted in Texas. (See trail­er below.) Into the Abyss prob­a­bly won’t change the U.S. penal sys­tem, or how the death penal­ty gets met­ed out. But that was nev­er the point of the film, and it’s not why Her­zog threw him­self, body and soul, into what he calls the most intense film­mak­ing expe­ri­ence of his life, a project that left him feel­ing each day like he had been “hit by a truck.” The con­ver­sa­tion runs 25 min­utes. h/t @webacion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe (Lit­er­al­ly)

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture